Pollution of the environment by toxic metals arises as a result of human activities such as industrial, agricultural, mine-drainage and sewage disposal. Once in the environment, the metal undergo several forms of transformations. The removal of toxic metal is of great significance from the environmental and industrial point of view. The increased in sound environment and stringent legal requirements has led to the need for cost effective treatment technology for metal pollution control. Biological treatment processes using microbial biomass are known capable of treating industrial waste successfully. The initial aim of the project was to screen a number of metal-tolerant organisms and develop microbial strain capable of detoxification, biosorption and recovery of heavy metals. Due to limited knowledge based studies on several industrial wastes are necessary to determine the potential strains as well as the viable technique to be used in recovery/removal of heavy metals

Rapid urbanization of the Philippines, especially of Metro Manila area, has caused serious water pollution. Main causes of this are categorized into industrial wastewater and domestic wastewater, discharged without sufficient treatment. As for industrial wastewater, it is essential to put strict regulations on effluent standards, and for municipalities to keep a regular check to ensure these regulations are observed. Philippine government has been working on the improvement of the legislation and control of industrial wastewater until now. However, from now on, it is vital to put more efforts in getting domestic wastewater treated properly. It is indeed crucial to put the existing sewerage construction plans into practice, but generally, sewerage systems require; 1) long construction period, 2) effective funding, 3) high-density construction, and 4) human resources to run the systems effectively. Meanwhile, on-site waste water treatment tanks, or what we called purifiers, can play an important role in controlling the pollution of water environment, and they will serve to complement the sewerage system even after the completion of construction. Small-scale on-site wastewater treatment tanks, or small-scale purifiers, developed and used in Japan especially in developing countries, not only in the scope of environmental conservation but also from the viewpoint of utilizing the economic resources in the private sector

Macro-porous cellulose carrier (AQUACEL) was applied for immobilization of denitrifying bacteria to develop a practical nitrogen removal system with high performance. When the immobilized cell was applied to denitrification under high nitrogen loading rate, flotation of carriers caused by the evolution of nitrogen gas resulted. To counter the problem of carrier flotation, new reactors using hydrodynamic jet flow and centrifugal force were developed. These new reactors distributed homogeneously the floating carriers, and complete denitrification was obtained even at high loading rate of 20 kg N/cu m-carrier/d. This AQUACEL system was effectively applied to denitrification of wastewater discharged from an eletroplating factory